Let's enjoy it while it lasts
General Discussion
Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
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0. See: Rules for Users.
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Not enough people remember pre-Digg Reddit. It was a lot like Lemmy is now. It will all come crashing down eventually.
I like lurking, with a comment here or there. I have noticed the comment sections are giant circle jerks with everyone congratulating each other on how smart and civil they are. Better than aggression and trolling but still... ew.
That was a very insightful point and I appreciate your delicacy in delivering it. Congratulations.
i used to love r/yourjokebutworse when it was still new. then people started doing the exact same thing in the comments that they were making fun of. im jerking myself off writing this i know
Add to it, some of us habitual lurkers (me for example) find it not as meaningless to comment. Didn't want to do it often because most comments get buried and it would feel empty and kinda pointless.
I havenβt been able to quite put my finger on why Iβm commenting more here and this nailed it.
Yep, I can now see how much of a cesspool Reddit has become when going back and forth between the two platforms. Part of me wants to see the platform grow bigger and bigger, but I fear the same will eventually happen if it gets bigger.
I already see it and it bums me out. People are already stepping in a discussion just to be aggressively mean for no reason. I hope we can reply to them with patience instead of feeding the monster (or, just, y'know, don't engage)
Grumblegrumble this is our chance to be different!
People are already stepping in a discussion just to be aggressively mean for no reason
YOUR MOTHER!
Yet. I think there's a critical mass aspect to this. The Eternal September of Lemmy is yet to happen
It also comes down to what instance you happen to visit. Lemmygrad for example is a legit tankie cesspit. There's currently a popular post about Greta Thunberg and it pretty quickly devolves into calling her a traitor, because she met with Zelensky: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/902175?scrollToComments=true . Among other things you will find plenty of justification for the Russian invasion and their war crimes. And the admins openly support trolling outsiders. I'm on the left and I don't have an issue with Marxism or the concept of communism, but fuck that instance.
I had no idea what "tankie" even was until recently. The internet is so weird.
I think the broad problem with reddit and the like, which will leach into Lemmy with time unless we change things, is the slicing and dicing of the topic that is to be talked about.
When you do this ("oh sorry this is r/typewriters, you should post in r/typewriter_repair instead!"), you treat people as vehicles for content. We make echo chambers and don't communicate as whole individuals.
So far Lemmy doesn't have this divide. So far...
When I was on Reddit, I responded to a guy in latestagecapitalism who was talking about how Stalin wasn't that bad, and how everything we hear about the Soviets is fake information, made up as Western Propaganda.
I chimed in telling him I'm Romanian, and how my grandpa was in WW2. I told him that my grandpa would always tell us anecdotes about how the Russians acted vs everyone else, and if anything it was worse than what we usually think of. Then I said that Stalin is too well known for it to all be fake.
Well the response I got was the guy called my grandpa a liar. Then like 10 minutes later, I got permanently banned from the subreddit.
That is when I learned what a Tankie was lol. And that the subreddit was infested with them.
I took one look at Lemmygrad, and oof.
I can't stand lemmy grad and I hope every instance defederates soon. They're absolute scum of the earth edgelord contrarians and nothing more.
I sincerely hope it doesn't. If Lemmy reaches the same levels of toxicity as reddit then I will be moving to a new platform with less people and hopefully less toxicity. Lemmy has opened my eyes to the fact that I don't have to constantly deal with assholes in order to engage with people online. There are tons of good quality, friendly communities online, you just have to find them.
Lemmy is new and itβs not very big yet. If it grows big enough it will be eventually
Sure, but it took years for reddit to devolve into what it is today. It started out as a really great place to read interesting articles on all kinds of topics and have intelligent discussions about them afterwards. Reddit hasn't been like that in a very, very, very long time but what we have going on here right now is very close to that.
I feel like there isn't a "hive mind" on Lemmy like there was/is on Reddit. Even if just a few folks disagreed with your opinion on Reddit, everyone else felt like they HAD to downvote it too and then the next thing you know, you're being downvoted to oblivion. Here, it seems that folks actually respect your opinion whether or not they agree with it; and while you may get a few downvotes or more, people aren't afraid of upvoting your comment either.
Such a different vibe and I'm here for it!
Does anyone else feel like we're kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop though?
We did see a bit of drama that resulted in various instances being defederated, and even if Lemmy is more resistant to corporate bullshit there are some people and groups out there whose sole purpose seems to be ensuring that nobody else can have nice things.
I'm hoping that the people who contributed fine work towards tools for Reddit will be willing to help improve Lemmy as well, but as the same time users need to understand that while the experience is very "Reddit-like" there are some serious differences in technology and implementation that are going to lead to interesting and potentially unforeseen bumps in the road for the future
I think a hive mind will develop, just based on the nature of the format. In any community there will be prevailing opinions that are upvoted and dissenting opinions that are downvoted. People are still settling down and searching for their specific corners to camp in, which is why you're probably seeing more variety for the time being.
Plus Beehaw exists, so there's your hive mind right there. Get it? Cause they're bee themed? Beehive?
Downvoting here seems to be used as it is meant to: to filter out noise.
I love the vibe.
Probably because all of us are real people struggling to find an alternative to Reddit where we used to spend our time in. No bots, no algorithms, just real people trying to make our new home a better place.
Give it time. Should it become more popular the trolls will come. In fact I've seen a few already (some anti Ukraine posts makes me think those were professionals trying to shift opinion, but what do I know).
Not yet
A small handful of people are working to change that, you find them here and there. Easy to identify as they downvote based on "I don't like that.", they're not really capable of greater complexity usually. Or that's how it seems anyway.
We should expect it to get worse though, as our population grows. It's inevitable, the internet is the internet. Our initially strong culture is an excellent sign though, if our growth continues at a measured pace, we should be able to maintain it for some time.
Especially the upvote/downvote system drives bandwagon behavior. If a post gets like 3 downvotes and the next gets 2, people just look at the votes and assume who's right and follow that. They will literally think votes decides what's right. Though when you're on the other side of that, it's also important to know that votes don't matter and it doesn't mean you're wrong. It's also important to know when to leave a conversation when it stops being a discussion and turns into an argument. Arguments are literally useless and just aggravating, which people won't admit that they love.
The reddit behavior certainly still comes out. But an upside about decentralization is you can block the instance they're from since that annoying behavior tends to follow the same company and you probably block a lot more annoying people as a result.
So far. One the nob ends find a way in it'll not be as friendly, that's why blocking them and their instances promptly is important. I saw something on blocklists the other day and will look into that. I may be totally wrong, but to me it sounds like the filters we'd use in uBlock Origin or similar. Sounds good to me.
I did see a theory that part of the vibe is the result of federation itself. People drift to instances that align with them and their views, and instances have defederated each other based on hate or trolls. Basically the trolls start quarantining themselves.
I just hate how βtoxic cesspoolβ is the default. I was just watching a short video on YouTube about the US city of Baltimore, a place I heard about from an old family friend who studied at Hopkins many years ago.
The video was about the cityβs decline, with the primary cause (according to the video) being the hollowing out of the manufacturing and logistics industries. The channel, Forgotten Places, doesnβt strike me as one that toxic people would be flooding to (those channels exist).
Can you guess what every other comment is about? Hint: itβs not the abandonment of productive industry. A small number of comments name more historical industrial employers that have left the city, but by far the comments with the most upvotes are βwe all know we canβt discuss what happened to Baltimore πππππβ
I think that is because all those sites (youtube, twitter, facebook, reddit,...) are promoting "user engagement" or whatever they call it, so they made algorithms that promote it. Of course, that means they promote toxicity and agruments, easiest way to motivate people to comment.
So the whole network becomea unhealthy and toxic.
That's also the reason I am against federating with them.
My very first ever post on Reddit,12 years ago, the first commentor called me a fa**ot and the second commentor told me 'KYS'. I posted a picture of a dog sitting in the driver seat of a car with his elbow hanging out and he was wearing a sweater. It was discouraging to say the least and burned me pretty bad. I deleted the post, tried to wipe it from my memory, continued on reddit for the next decade treading lightly knowing how toxic and mean it could be.
Here's the picture in case you want to see it and say nice things. I thought it was worthy.
It's wild. Maybe it's a honeymoon period where we're all in this big spaceship together, or maybe that's just what it's gonna be like! There's a sort of liberating feeling of being on Lemmy that I think brings out the best in people
I like the mental imagery of us all being in a Lemmy-shaped spaceship, traveling to an exoplanet to start a new society because the Earth was destroyed by corporate greed. We're all laughing and joking together, there's free pizza, lots of nerdy discussions, and the atmosphere is jubilant, having escaped our dystopian living conditions and feeling hope for the future.
I quite litterally never posted or commented anything on Reddit, just couldn't stand being absolutely shitted on if I said something wrong.
I'm surprised of how many replies I have had to my own replies with people actually adding to the conversation and being polite. On reddit I barely got any response and most of it was tangential to the subject at best.
Not yet. I am working on, it give it time.
In my case it's like sitting to discuss on a table with 10 people versus 300 where noise is much bigger.